Arriving in Brazil and a trip through Paraguay

We flew into Sau Paulo, Brazil and after a couple of days we soon settled in. It was a very busy city full of high-rise buildings and takeaways blasting out dance music. The main highlight was bumping into Pele in a street market, which was pretty exciting. We then headed to Foz Do Iguazu and the Iguazu Falls. As many of you know my love of waterfalls you can guess how happy i was......it was gorgeous. We only saw the falls from the Brazilian side, but we are hoping to visit the Argentinean side at the end of the trip.

Since we had time to kill before meeting friends in Salvador we decided to head to Paraguay for a couple of weeks. Although this was not a common destination for backpackers we liked it from the moment we arrived. The main reason for this was the lack of tourists. We spent some time in the capital, Asusion, explored some Jesuit ruins in the South and also visited a national park. The park was beautiful, we spent our time trekking though tropical jungle and swimming in waterfalls. The only bad thing was the ridiculous amount of spiders, most of which were blocking the path; Dave was unlucky enough to walk straight into a massive one.

We decided to leave Paraguay in typical Paraguayan style and spent 2 days on a cargo boat travelling up the Rio Paraguay towards Brazil. Unfortunately we arrived late and there were no longer spaces on the boat to rent hammocks. This left us with the delight of sleeping under cargo sheets on deck while a storm raged around us. However, the second night we were lucky enough to sleep on the floor with the cockroaches and rats under some friends hammocks!!! The journey was beautiful though, and we enjoyed drinking ´terere´(local iced tea) and eating Chippa ( a traditional Paraguayan snack made with cornbread) with the locals, while watching life on the riverbank . It was amazing to see how many people lived on such a small boat; it even had its own market and prostitute. The border crossing into Brazil was pretty basic and involved a small rowing boat at 3 in the morning but was good fun.

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